


um

by timetobegin



Category: Green Gables Fables
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 03:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6594160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetobegin/pseuds/timetobegin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilbert's thoughts as he watches 'Lost Chances'.</p><p>Basically I am overflowing with Shirbert feels and needed an outlet. And then I imagined Gil in his hospital room wanting desperately to get better so he could talk to Anne.</p>
            </blockquote>





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Gilbert Blythe couldn’t believe his ears. He also couldn’t believe his eyes. While he was at it, he decided not to trust any of his senses. He knew his heart was beating because there was a monitor at his bedside that beeped with annoying regularity, but he could have sworn it stopped. His equilibrium had shifted, throwing him off balance, and he was pretty sure he could smell flowery shampoo along with the sharp, acrid smell of whatever made hospitals so sterile.

 

The thing is, Gilbert had gotten used to the fact of unrequited love. It was where he lived for two long years. He hadn’t exactly made himself comfortable there, but there was familiarity along with the ache. The thought of leaving that headspace in December was terrifying and exhilarating, but in the end it didn’t matter. He stayed put. After that, he settled into it, expecting to live there until he moved on.

 

Or forever. There was always the possibility that he’d never get over Anne Shirley.

 

She occupied his brain in a way no one else ever had, therefore it was safe, not cynical, to accept that he might never feel quite that way about anyone else.

 

But this… well.

 

“ _I love him._ ”

 

After literally everything that happened this week, it was hard not to believe this wasn’t a finals-stress-induced dream. Hardly sleeping or eating for a week and getting hit by a car on his bicycle, only to hear Anne Shirley declare to the entire internet that she was in love with him?

 

Either that, or he hallucinated the video, since he was high on pain medication.

 

But no, Josie tweeted about it. That’s how he found it in the first place. Phil had broken into his dorm room (read: knocked politely and asked his roommate to let her in) to retrieve his phone, so he wouldn’t be bored out of his mind while recovering. (But she’d done it while he was still unconscious, so it was her own sweet way of assuring him that she knew he’d be okay all along. Or at least, she cared enough to hope.) (No one had brought him his computer, assuming correctly that he’d only try to study if given the chance.)

 

So he scrolled through Twitter because there was nothing on TV. And then he saw that Josie tweeted one of Anne’s videos. Josie hadn’t been tweeting much since... anyway, it caught his attention. She sounded a lot like her old self, and he was curious enough to watch the video.

 

He couldn’t process any of it. He just kept hitting the replay button trying to make it make sense. He’d grown to accept that Anne would never love him back. But there she was, sitting adorably tousled and sleep deprived on her bed, saying the words. About him. What even.

 

Part of him wanted to say something to her, publicly, like she had, tell the world that nothing was different, that he still loved her more than anything. Part of him wanted to find her immediately and have that conversation in private. Most of him was still in shock. Somehow, he composed a _very_ eloquent tweet. At least telling her he’d seen. Prefacing a conversation. Hopefully.

 

And inspiring a _flurry_ of @replies from her/his/their followers. The only coherent thought that makes it through his numb brain is that he’s really glad he sent his father to a hotel to sleep once they were told he’d be fine. He could _not_ deal with questions. Not now.

 

Anne said she loved him. _Him._ Not Roy. He vaguely remembered hearing from someone that Anne and Roy had broken up, but he hadn’t really believed it. They’d seemed so happy. He seemed like everything Anne had ever wanted. When had her feelings changed so drastically? Was there evidence in her videos?

 

Of course there was. Undersharing wasn’t really a problem Shirley had. Must watch.

 

Still in a daze, he scrolled down her channel page. He’d stopped watching her videos consistently before winter break. The last one he’d seen was the one for Ruby.

 

He’s pretty sure the one after that was the day Phil had called him saying Anne was despondent (her word) about Ruby’s death and nothing she or Roy was saying was helping. He vaguely remembers the camera being set up, but his memory was mostly filled with Anne’s sobs and her arms around his neck. He skipped that one, because he did not need to cry in this semi-public space, on top of everything else.

 

Gil’s heart wanted to avoid any video with Roy in the thumbnail on principle, but the video was titled “Not Alright”, so it probably didn’t consist of them making gooey eyes at one another.

  
And indeed it did not. It consisted of them getting into a rather spectacular fight in which Roy ignored Anne’s feelings. True, Anne probably shouldn’t have recorded the conversation, but she also had a point and Gil couldn’t help hating him a little more.

 

Over the course of her next video, Gil felt his heart break over and over. He’d never seen Anne look so downtrodden. Hearing his name from her mouth gave him his usual shivers, but it only served to make him more angry with himself. He should have noticed. He should have tried harder to see. Sure, they’d been talking more, but they hadn’t really _talked_ in months. He missed her too, with such an aching fierceness he sometimes wondered how he paid attention to anything else.

 

Maybe that’s how he got hit by a car. Sure, the police said the driver was texting, but Gil hadn’t been in his right mind either. Between missing Anne, mourning Ruby, lack of sleep, stress about finals, and work, it’s amazing he could even bike in a straight line.

 

He skipped the next one, since it was called “True Love” and Gil didn’t want to risk it, although he couldn’t help but think that Anne was starting to realize maybe Roy wasn’t everything she wanted.

 

In the next one, Anne dumped Royal Gardner.

 

Gil thought he’d feel triumphant, validated. Instead, he mostly felt pity. The boy clearly had it bad for her and not only did she not reciprocate, she posted it to YouTube. At least Gil had given her permission to air his heartbreak on her channel. (A horrible decision really, but he didn’t blame Anne.)

 

He went back and watched the video of her and Phil talking about ‘true love’. Phil is radiant and bubbly, while Anne is, astoundingly, dimmed. Quiet. In the face of Phil’s enthusiasm about her amazing new relationship with Blake, Anne’s responses about Roy seem relatively emotionless, which isn’t something Gil ever thought he’d see. Whenever Anne loved, she loved with all her heart and soul. The events of the year had tempered her, but Gil never expected something as fundamental as that to change.

 

In ‘Mixed Up’, he listened to her make up with Phil, and talk through what went wrong with Roy. Classic Anne. Classic, stubborn, head-in-the-clouds, romantic Anne. Impossibly, he loved her a little more.

 

The next video didn’t have a fancy title or a nice thumbnail. It was just Anne, from a weird angle, looking really worried. Once he clicked on the video, he realized it was posted the day of his accident.

 

This was another side of Anne he’d never seen before. Frantic, panicking. When she and Phil had visited the day before, she’d been worn out and quiet, but relatively calm; at least, as much as he could remember through his drug-induced haze. He had no idea she was that worried. Or that the worry was specifically about _him_ , and not just because she’d already lost one friend this year. The description is equally rushed, but the words “I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you” burn themselves into his brain.

 

Her most recent video started making a hell of a lot more sense. He was able to watch it again without his mind grinding to a halt when she said she loved him.

 

_“I don’t want to live without him.”_

 

And she thought he was dating _Christine?_

 

He needed to get out of this bed.

 

The gods of love were decidedly not on his side. Just as he was throwing the blankets off his legs to try standing, his doctor (the one he vaguely remembers calling ‘mom’ while Anne and Phil were visiting) strode into the room.

 

“Whoa, slow down there hotshot. What do you think you’re doing?”

 

As a premed student, he knew this was a trick question. There was no answer he could give that would make this seem reasonable; he wasn’t even supposed to go to the bathroom without a nurse to make sure he didn’t collapse on the way, or something. His brain knew all that. But his mouth did not.

 

“Um,” he said eloquently, “well you see, Dr. Marsden, I’ve been feeling much better today, and I was wondering if I could just go talk to this girl–I mean, my friend–”

 

Dr. Marsden shut him up with a Look.

 

“Gilbert, you were hit by a car on Tuesday. That was _three days ago_. You were incredibly lucky; all your other injuries were minor cuts and bruises. You didn’t even break a rib. While I’m glad you’re feeling better, I definitely cannot release you, not yet.”

 

She pulled her stethoscope out of her pocket, plugged it into her ears, and placed it on his chest. After three days, he knew the drill. Gil breathed deeply several times. The breathing part was easier every time she examined him.

 

As she moved the stethoscope around to his back, she said, “Honestly, I don’t really care about your love life. It’ll still be there when you’re healed, and then you’ll be able to appreciate it with the full capacity of your lungs.”

 

She was quiet for a moment as she listened, then pulled the stethoscope from her ears. “That being said, you are healing well. You’ll probably only need to be here a few more days, then you can go get your bonnie lass.” She winked at him then left.

 

A few _days_? But Anne said she loved him! On CAMERA. He needed to talk to her like, yesterday. And in person. This was not a texting or tweeting matter.

 

In desperation, he looked down at his chest and took a deep breath. “Get it together, guys,” he whispered to his lungs.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Thanks, as always, to the wonderful Bibbsch, without whom I could not function as a writer. Comments are life. Come feels with me.


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